If your head has not been in the sand for the last few weeks, you’d know that Gustavus was ranked as the sixth-fittest campus in the United States by Men’s Fitness. Well no wonder. The campus here is beset with a quasi-narcissistic demeanor that would lead to such a happening. No matter what time of day, when you go to Lund Center (and I pass through there quite often, utilizing it as a handy corridor from College View) there are people on the elliptical machines and treadmills, trying to lose those few extra pounds or to retain that size 2. But is this devotion to beauty a good thing? This campus is one that prides itself on image, on looking good. A friend related this anecdote from a prospetive student tour in which one of the visitors asked “Where do they keep the fat people?” It’s not just body image, it’s also what goes on top of the body as 90% of campus, it seems, dresses as if they just stepped out of the pages of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog (though with a marked lowered sexual provocativeness). In fact, it feels almost like a SHAME to show up to class in *gasp* warmup pants and a tee-shirt. It’s just not kosher on campus.
And so people modify their dress to fit in and they modify their body images to try to keep up with the Joneses (or the Johnsons/Andersons here at this bastion of Swedishness). Suddenly what was once good enough is not good enough in the hyper-visible world of Gustavus. So let us ask ourselves, do WE perpetuate the cycle of looking pretty that can wreak havoc on others’ (not to mention our own) self esteem?